Revolutions
by Radon65
Summary: Set in season four. Returning to their motel after a successful hunt, the Winchester brothers are surprised to find something quite unexpected in their room. Something that they're not prepared to deal with and that will ultimately threaten the tenuous bond of brotherhood they've been sporting lately... (This is pretty whumpy on the angel, folks.)
1. Chapter 1

A season four fic! Because seasons four and five are my favourite eras for fan fics. This is initially intended to take place sometime between _I Know What You Did Last Summer_ and _Heaven and Hell_. This story will be three chapters, should update about once a week. It's actually already done, but I reserve the right to tweak. Enjoy.

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 **Chapter 1**

It's getting on toward twilight, and the grainy white walls of the half star motel they're staying at are tinted a rose pink in the light of the dying sun. Since they'd just ganked a particularly vicious rawhead an hour ago, they decided to celebrate with dinner, and their fast food run has been a major success. Dean's got a bacon cheeseburger as thick as his fist and beer battered onion rings, while Sam has a grilled chicken and spinach salad with cranberries and Parmesan, and Dean is seriously impressed – if a little disturbed – that the same restaurant carries both. He can smell the grease soaking into his paper bag and practically daydreams about it reaching his mouth. He pulls the Impala into an empty parking space, down at the end near where their room is, and snatches the bag from Sam in the passenger seat as he kills the ignition.

"Someday, we are gonna wean you off rabbit food," Dean days to his brother as they get out of the car and make their way into the slightly dim hall that leads down to their room.

"Yeah, and someday you're gonna have a heart attack," Sam shoots back, shoving his own bag under his arm.

They reach the door to their room and Sam pulls out his key, unlocking it. The door swings open, and the sight that greets them has them both dropping their bags and pulling out the guns they keep stashed in their waistbands.

The small table they were planning to eat on has been upended, and the duffel bag of spare weapons has slid off and is on the floor beneath it, holding it up at an awkward angle. The floor lamp over in the corner has been knocked to the ground, its shade crunched in on one side where it looks like it's been stepped on. A decorative vase filled with fake silver-sprayed flowers has fallen on the carpet and somehow smashed. Stretched out between the beds and the television is the body of a man, maybe in his fifties, with graying hair that's receding from his forehead. He's wearing a yellow polo shirt and khakis, and his mouth is open and his eyes have been burned out of his skull to leave two gaping, fleshy holes, singed and still faintly steaming, smelling of charred meat.

A few feet away, Castiel is sitting on Dean's bed, hunched over in the dimness, and he doesn't look up as Dean cautiously flicks on the light in the room.

"Cas?" Dean says, lowering his gun and shoving it back into his waistband. The angel doesn't respond, and Dean walks over to him while Sam moves to check the body, like Dean, lowering his gun, but not putting it away. Dean sits down on Sam's bed, opposite Castiel, and leans slightly toward him, frowning as there is no reaction to his approach.

"Cas?"

Dean reaches out and puts a hand on the angel's arm, shaking it gently.

"Cas?" he says again.

"Dean," Castiel finally answers, soft and low, and he sounds as though speaking costs him a great effort.

"Cas, what happened?" Dean asks. "You okay?"

"I... I came to..." Castiel trails off, sounding out of breath, and he doesn't bother to finish the sentence. Instead, he waits a moment and then starts a new one.

"There was... a demon. Lying... in wait for you." He pauses for several seconds, and Dean's almost decided to say something to check that he's still with him when Castiel speaks again.

"It was... powerful. I'm..."

This time, Castiel stops and doesn't speak again for a full minute. Dean glances over at Sam, who has left the dead body behind and is peering cautiously out of the curtains that hang over their window. Sam notices him looking, along with the question in his eyes, and shrugs.

"Dead demon, I guess," he says in a tone that indicates that he has no more idea what's going on than Dean does. "I'm not seeing anyone outside. If it was that tough, it probably blew in alone. Figured it could handle us." Sam runs his hand over the windowsill and it comes away yellow with powder. "Sulfur," he says, though it was already a foregone conclusion. Dean nods and turns back to Castiel, who still hasn't said anything more, but has slumped further forward in the last minute.

"Cas, hey," Dean says, shaking him again. When Castiel does nothing, he shakes harder. "Cas!" he says loudly. "You awake? Look at me, huh?"

Castiel shifts slightly at the entreaty, and slowly raises his head, lifting it with effort to face Dean. His eyes are wrong. They look hazy and out of focus, and there's a thin but steady stream of dark red blood trickling out of his nose. It drips down to stain the front of his shirt and coat, but Castiel doesn't appear to notice.

"Cas, you're bleeding," Dean informs him, wondering how well he can see right now, how much he needs the borrowed eyes he's wearing. Castiel lifts a hand to swat clumsily at the blood on his face, then gives up and waves the now bloodied hand dismissively.

"It's the vessel," Castiel says slowly. "Sometimes he leaks."

Dean's not sure if he should laugh or be appalled at the statement, which seems to place blame on the poor guy Castiel's possessing for bleeding. He's not even sure how to respond to such an assessment.

"Well... it's not good," he manages lamely. Sam has come over to stand beside the bed and is looking down at the bleeding angel with concern.

"Here."

Sam leans forward to snatch a Kleenex from the box on the end table between the beds and hands it to Dean. Castiel blinks, and his eyes clear. He stiffens suddenly, shrinking back.

"I should go," he says, his voice raspy. He stands abruptly and takes a halting step forward, then another.

"Cas," Dean says as the angel brushes past Sam, shying away from the hand his brother holds out to offer him help. Dean stares after him, left holding the Kleenex and feeling dismayed and oddly redundant. Castiel makes it to the door and fumbles with the knob, causing Dean to wonder just how many occasions Castiel has even ever had to actually open a door. The fact that he's bothering now must mean that he can't zap out, which must mean that he's messed up pretty good, and suddenly there's an uncomfortable knot in Dean's stomach as he realizes that he's not really okay with the prospect of Cas wandering the streets confused and bloody all his own.

What if the demon wasn't alone? Surely Cas can't handle another fight right now, even against a regular demon. Hell, he probably couldn't handle it if an ordinary human tried to mug him or something. Dean stands as Castiel ceases his struggle with the doorknob and instead slumps against the door, his knees wobbling. The angel's name is on Dean's lips again, but it's not what comes out when Castiel's legs give way and he starts sliding down the door.

"Sam!" Dean yells, because his brother is closer and Sam jumps forward and catches the angel around the middle as he takes a nosedive toward the floor. To Dean's surprise, Cas cries out as if in pain and struggles against Sam's grip, cowering back toward the unopened door. Dean rushes to help, because even as pathetic and half-dead looking as Castiel is right now, he's still putting up enough of a fight that Sam can barely hold him. But it's only for a couple of seconds. By the time Dean's arms encircle him too, the fight has gone out of the angel, his shoulders dropping and his limp limbs starting to tangle. His head ends up lolling against Dean's shoulder, which isn't gay at all.

"What'd you do?" Dean asks Sam, as by unspoken agreement they haul Cas back to the bed he'd been sitting on before he decided to go all 50s B-movie heroine.

"Nothing," Sam says, and they are gentle as they lay him down, but still Castiel whimpers like an injured dog, and his eyelids flicker as they struggle to open, two thin slits of blue winking on and off as he fights.

"Cas hey, calm down," Sam says soothingly, and kneads a comforting hand against Castiel's shoulder. Castiel gasps and jerks violently away, nearly spilling off the edge of the bed, but Dean catches him and gingerly pushes him back to the center. He lets go again quickly and holds his hands up and away, fingers splayed and empty.

"Okay, let's try not touching him," he tells Sam, who likewise steps back, pulling his hands away. "Just give him a minute," Dean suggests, but Castiel is still restless, his hands twitching and his eyes coming half open as he turns toward Dean, trying to rise but then falling back. His lidded gaze is blank and unfocused as before, and Dean doesn't think he can see out of those eyes. Dean begins to suspect that regardless of whatever Castiel is like when he's not body snatching, he inhabits the vessel fully, and whatever's happening to his angel self is reflected in the body he's wearing. His angel self can't see, and that makes Dean feel unaccountably ill.

"Cas?" he says tentatively, hoping the eyes will sharpen.

They don't. Castiel makes a sound like a drowning man, and then says something in a tongue Dean can't understand. The words come out muttered and breathy, the syllables short and sharp and putting Dean in mind of the Greek that Bobby occasionally reads aloud, except it's nothing like Greek, really. He looks at Sam.

"Is that Latin?" he asks uncertainly, although it didn't sound like Latin, either.

"No," Sam answers, his brow furrowed with thought.

"What is it, then?"

"No idea."

Sam shrugs.

"Cas," Dean says again, a little loudly this time, hoping the angel can still understand what he's saying. "We're not gonna touch you, okay? Just relax."

Whether due to Dean's words, or simply because he doesn't have the energy anymore, Castiel gradually quiets, and the blue half moons disappear as his eyes slide shut. He is still.

"What the hell happened to him?" Dean wonders aloud.

"Hell," Sam says succinctly, and the quip would be funny if it weren't quite so true, and if Dean didn't have a backlog of memories related to the subject that he doesn't want boiling back up.

"Yeah," Dean agrees, and they leave it at that. Dean gestures to the dead demon on the floor. "I guess we'd better get Dr. Doom out of here while it's still dark."

Sam nods.

"I'll get a couple of bags," he begins, but he's interrupted by a knock at the door. The two of them freeze at the sound. And then Dean has his gun out and is pressed up against the wall on the side of the door with the knob, while Sam is ready with his own gun and has stepped between the two beds, between the comatose angel and the closed door.

"Yeah?" Dean says.

A bored voice answers his through the thin wood.

"Management," it sighs. "There was a complaint about freaky noises. We take that sort of thing seriously here."

The dry, disinterested monotone indicates anything but, but even in a cheap joint like this, nobody's going to ignore a body on the floor, especially not a body with its eyes burnt out of its skull. Dean curses under his breath, amazed that the management here even stirred itself to investigate such a complaint, but then so far this evening's just been full of surprises. And in the current ratio of bad surprises versus good surprises, bad is winning.

"One sec," Dean says casually, waving frantically at Sam to hide the body while he snatches up Ruby's knife from the duffel bag still trapped under the table. Maybe management hasn't stirred itself to investigate a complaint, or maybe there wasn't a complaint at all. ...Or maybe it has and there was and they need to not get arrested because both an angel and a demon dropped in earlier to say hi. Dean rights the table one-handed while Sam drags the body out of sight behind his bed in record time. Finally Dean reaches over and pulls the door open just wide enough to not be suspicious, the knife clenched behind his back in his other hand.

The guy standing outside the door is shrimpy and thin, with lank blank hair and a badly trimmed goatee that fails to hide the tobacco stains on his lips. He looks so completely detached from his "investigation" that Dean thinks the guy is stoned, which should hopefully make getting rid of him a lot easier. Dean begins to think he's not facing a demon simply because most demons would go for a body that's buffer, better looking, and a lot classier. Still, it might be slim pickings around here, for class anyway.

"What noises?" Dean asks, sounding completely oblivious.

"Another guest says she heard some banging around and a scream. And some like, electrical frying noises," the manager says, his voice completely flat. "She's thinking somebody killed himself with a toaster in the bathtub."

"Uh huh," Dean says. "Well, have you considered that she's probably tripping acid, because we weren't even here ten minutes ago and we don't own a toaster."

The guy tilts his head a little to the side, in a sort of strange satire of the way Castiel does when he's confused. His mouth half opens, and then after a second of staring vaguely at Dean, he says,

"Yeah, okay, that's a possibility."

He nods and Dean nods along with him, hoping that's the end of it.

"Is this like, a drug drop off though?" the guy asks, gesturing to the floor of the hall, and Dean has no idea what he's talking about until he pokes his head out to see and realizes that they left their food outside the room and completely forgot about it.

"No, that's dinner," Dean says, and he swears the guy looks disappointed. Dean bends carefully to retrieve the bags with his free hand, while still keeping the knife out of sight. He straightens up and decides that okay, now this is the end of it, when he hears a groan from behind him.

He turns to see that Castiel is twitching again where he lies on the bed, almost as if he's having a seizure. Sam kneels down beside the bed and leans over him, talking to him, Dean thinks, but so quietly he can't make anything out from where he stands at the door. Whatever Sam says, it doesn't work. Castiel turns away from him, half-crawling, half-rolling, and tips over the edge of the bed, a solid thump audible as he slams into the floor.

"Hey. Is he like, on something?" the manager asks in his same stoned monotone. "'Cuz, we've got a policy."

"Uh, that's my cousin. He's, uh, got PTSD." Dean says the very first thing that pops into his head and immediately closes the door in the manager's face. It's not like the guy's going to do anything about it – he's so high he can't be thinking clearly, especially not if he's looking for more drugs on the guests and hoping he can share. Dean takes a split second to turn the lock and then half-sprints across the room to where Castiel has fallen and where Sam has come around the side of the bed and is hovering over him, uncertain.

Castiel is curled sideways on the stained 80s carpet, breathing hard, with his eyebrows drawn together and the corners of his mouth turned down sharply, like he's going to be sick. Dean really hopes he won't be, because cleaning up angel vomit has never been on his list of important life achievements, and if there's corn involved, he's going to flatly refuse to participate. What the heck do angels eat, anyway? Dean has never seen food in any form pass Castiel's lips. But Cas doesn't throw up, and Sam is standing there looking at Dean helplessly, since they've never had to care for a sick angel before, or whatever's the matter with him, and apparently they're doing everything wrong. Dean wonders if this is why Cas wanted to leave – because he knew they'd suck at this.

"I didn't even touch him," Sam says, confused and a little defensive, in response to Dean's questioning look. Dean shrugs and puts his hands up to indicate that he knows Sam didn't, and that he's just as clueless as to why Cas is reacting so badly to any help they try to give him. He crouches down by the huddled form, trying to keep back enough to give the angel some space, but even so Castiel is curling up into a tighter ball, shrinking back against the bed, and Dean figures he'd crawl under it if the mattress wasn't sagging so low in the bed frame that there wasn't room. At least it looks like his nose has stopped bleeding, but with all his moving around, the long line of half-dry blood has smeared everywhere, smudging his jaw and throat and staining his clothes down to his knees. He looks like a murder victim.

"Cas," Dean says, trying to be gentle and not let the fact that he's starting to get really frustrated with all of this make it into his tone. The brown paper bags that hold their dinners are still in his hands, and the food is probably getting cold. But Dean sighs and sets them aside as the angel of the Lord shivers and speaks again with those weird, sharp words that don't sound anything like Greek.

"Dammit," Dean swears softly, and he's on the point of standing back up again and just letting Cas rot on the floor, because he just doesn't know what else to do, when Castiel coughs and finally whispers something in English.

" _Please,_ "

is all he says.

"Please? Please what? Cas, what do you need?" Dean asks. Castiel says nothing, just coughs again, but then his eyes flutter back open, and though they're hazy at first, slowly they sharpen and Cas seems to relax slightly as he catches sight of Dean's face.

"Dean," he says, his voice dry and papery. He raises his head with effort and glances vaguely about, looking confused and disoriented. Dean wonders if he knows how he ended up on the floor, if he remembers anything since his failed attempt to get the door open. He starts somewhat upon seeing Sam, who is admittedly practically looming over him, even casting a shadow as his Sasquatch head blocks the room light. Castiel pushes a hand against the floor and manages to force himself up onto an elbow, pressing back against the bed like he's waiting on a firing squad. His eyes go hazy again for a split second, but then he blinks and they're back again, cold and dark and serious.

"Hey, you back on Earth now?" Dean asks him, and then berates both himself and the angel's literal-mindedness at the choice of words when Castiel stares back at him, thoroughly puzzled. "No, I mean, are you back with us?" he tries to rephrase. "You gonna stay awake?"

"Yes," Castiel says firmly, and there's a note of forced conviction in the word, as if Castiel is trying to convince not only them but himself of his stability. "I'm... I'm fine." His speech is rough and still halting, as if speaking alone requires a massive effort.

Dean snorts at the words, colored with exhaustion and following up bleeding and collapse and speaking in weird tongues.

"Yeah, sure," he says sarcastically, but Cas misses the sarcasm as usual and nods gravely at him.

"I'll... go now," Castiel says slowly, reaching up to grasp the side of the bed for support, clearly intent upon standing up. Dean is not going to haul his ass across the room again after he falls over, and what the hell is his hurry to be out of here when he's only just come back to being conscious?

"Whoa whoa, how about you just stay there a minute?" Dean says, irritation and exasperation bleeding into his tone. He still doesn't touch Cas, not wanting to deal with another freak out, but he holds out his hands for emphasis, as if he can stop the angel merely with the command emanating from them. Strangely, Castiel pauses in his attempt to rise, looking up and eying him with uncertainty and something akin to suspicion.

"Why... do you stop... me?" he asks, and as Dean watches, a fresh trickle of blood starts out of his nose and wanders down the marred surface of his front.

"Oh I don't know, because you're a mess?" Dean says, and again Cas looks at him uncomprehendingly, clearly not getting why Dean would insult his tidiness and cite it as reason to not let him leave. "You can't just wander off, Cas, you're..." Hurt isn't perhaps the right word, as other than the nosebleed the angel shows no sign of physical damage. Sick, tired? "You're all screwed up from that demon. You better call one of your angel buddies to come pick you up."

Castiel appears to relax again at Dean's suggestion, though he shakes his head.

"I can't."

Dean rolls his eyes.

"Well then you can't just leave," he says. "What if you run into trouble? For God's sake, a stiff wind could knock you over!"

"I am not concerned... with the wind," Castiel says seriously, once again looking confused at Dean's suggestion. "I'll... I'll be..."

He is drooping forward, peeling off the side of bed, his head tipping onto his shoulder and then sliding off of it to hang down limply as his whole body starts to crumple. At least he's already more or less on the floor, but he sways on his elbow and he looks about to faceplant into the carpet so Dean quickly reaches out and shoves his hands into Castiel's shoulders, pressing him back against the bed again to keep him upright. He acted on instinct and he grits his teeth as he expects Cas to go nuts again, but this time, the reaction is much more subdued. Castiel's breath hitches, and he groans faintly as his eyes try to keep their focus on Dean, his forehead crinkling again in pain or confusion, Dean can't tell.

"Yeah, you don't even need the wind," Dean mutters, and Castiel's eyes narrow in a faint glare at the words.

"I should..." he gets out, but then trails off again into silence, his expression pained and his eyes leaving Dean's face to wander toward some invisible spot on the floor. He's realizing just how pathetic he is right now, Dean thinks, admitting to himself that no, he can't walk out of here when he can barely keep it together on the floor. He's going to have to stay, and deal with the two _humans_ for longer than five minutes without giving them orders or friggin' vanishing whenever he wants. Dean's tempted to rag him about it, but he looks so messed up it feels like it'd be cruel, and besides, Cas probably wouldn't even get what he was saying.

"You wanna get up off the floor?" Dean asks him, as he slumps further against Dean's hands.

"It... doesn't matter," Castiel says, with as much aloofness as he can manage while sitting on the ancient carpet of a crappy motel room, the only thing keeping him upright a pair of human hands pinning him to the side of a bed that saw better days about ten years ago. The stubborn attempt at bravado pisses Dean off, and he seriously considers just letting go, letting the angel crumple to the floor and leaving him there. If he wants to be all high and holy, I'm better than you sad monkeys, then fine, he really doesn't need their help, he can just spend some time slumming it in whatever dirt is hiding in the shag. Dean really almost just lets him.

But Cas is breathing hard and half-awake and looks miserable, and Dean supposes he _did_ kill a demon for them, which, if the damn thing screwed him up this badly, probably would have been a bitch to fight, if they would have even been able to fight it. And of course, eventually Cas is going to recover from this and go back to ordering them around and generally being annoying, and he might be more of a dick about it if he remembers being left on the floor like an old newspaper. _Besides, the fact that the demon is already dead means that Sam won't be tempted to use his psychic freak powers,_ and for that, Dean is truly grateful. So Dean musters his maturity and self-control, which have taken a beating over the years but are still extant, and contents himself with an exasperated sigh over the angel's obstinate pretense.

"Okay then, bed it is," he says, a little tightly, but without being caustic about it. He jerks his head at Sam, who's still standing a few feet back, watching with his brow knit and a thin frown on his face. "Give me a hand, will you?" he asks.

He feels Castiel tense under his grip, and the angel turns and grabs hold of the side of the bed, trying to pull himself up.

"Not... necessary," he pants. "I can..."

But he can't, and it's obvious. Whatever strength he managed to muster earlier to try to walk out is spent, and he can't seem to coordinate his limbs properly to make their various efforts useful. He falters, grappling with the edge of the bed covers, and slumps back down, sprawling sideways against the mattress.

"Sam," Dean says, and Sam walks slowly over to them, that thoughtful frown still turning his lips. He reaches out and catches Castiel under the right arm, so Dean grabs him on the left, and together they haul him up and push him on the bed into a sitting position, like he was when they came in. Like before, he hunches over, curling into himself almost defensively, as a human would if they were caught in the rain, trying to block out the droplets. Sam lets go of him then and steps back, but Dean hesitates, his hand on Castiel's arm with the pretense of steadying him, but really he's taking a second to make sure he's not imagining it, that he can feel beneath his hand that the angel is trembling.

Is he cold? Scared?

Do angels get cold? Hell, do they get scared? He's never seen Castiel afraid before... although that isn't strictly true. Not _afraid_ per se, but he remembers the look in Castiel's eyes when he first introduced them to Uriel, the sort of wariness settled in them as Uriel stalked about, spouting off and treating them as if they were nothing to him, mere insects that he happened to find mildly amusing for the moment. Cas had seemed vaguely nervous of his cohort, the supposed specialist, although Dean has never seen Uriel do anything special. There's nothing special about being an ass.

"Cas?" Dean says questioningly, and Castiel groans, a pained sound, while his body droops and his forehead nearly touches his knees.

"Please," he says again, soft and distressed and so low Dean barely hears it.

"Cas? What does that mean?" he asks, prodding the arm he's holding with his thumb for good measure. They're not going to get anywhere if Cas won't freaking explain himself. But predictably, the angel goes silent. And Dean has had it with the cryptic murmuring and the ping pong reactions, and he grabs Castiel by both shoulders and jerks him upright, whatever's wrong with him be damned.

"Hey! Hey, talk to me!" he half-shouts, and shakes him, angry and confused and if he admits it to himself, concerned. Castiel's head snaps back at the shaking, his eyelids fluttering between open and shut, and the trickle of blood that's still coming out of his nose widens into a small river.

"Dammit," Dean swears, and glances around for the Kleenex Sam gave him. It's crumpled on the floor where he dropped it when the manager knocked, so he snatches a new one from the box and presses it up under Castiel's nose. Castiel jerks slightly, his eyes opening wide and confused, and Dean guesses that Cas probably doesn't even understand what he's doing, not having ever needed to stop a nosebleed before.

"I'm helping you," Dean says bluntly. "Just hold still and breath through your mouth."

Does he even actually need to breath? Dean doesn't know, but Castiel opens his mouth at the command, though not wide like a human would to suck in a breath, just a thin sliver, like he wants to say something but is having trouble deciding what. Dean wishes he would say something all right, tell them why the hell he's so hot and cold over everything they do, why he keeps trying to leave in spite of the shape he's in. And if they're doing something wrong, why won't he just tell them what it is? At least he seems okay for the moment – his trembles have died down and his eyes are still normal, if bewildered. Then again, confused by humans is practically Castiel's default setting.

"Okay," Dean says as he puts pressure on the bleeding, "Let's just take a second here, stay calm, and you explain what it is that keeps tripping you out."

Castiel's eyebrows draw together at the last bit, but despite the wording, Dean's pretty sure he understands what Dean wants. And he looks... pained by it. Like he doesn't want to explain, which isn't much of a surprise given he hasn't already, but newsflash, he's essentially trapped here and if he wants their help, he's going to have to level with them.

"So, Cas...?" Dean prompts him, an expectant lilt to his tone, and Castiel grimaces... and then abruptly tenses up again, his muscles going taut where Dean's left hand still has a grip on one of his arms.

"Yeah, that's exactly what I'm talking about, Cas," Dean says, a little harshly, but he's too irritated to care. "The hell's the matter with you? You act like you're afraid or something."

If anything, Castiel's body grows more tense at the words, but his face immediately ditches the confusion and locks down into his usual impassive glare.

"I do not... fear you," he says, halting but sharply, and there's almost an insulted anger in his tone, though otherwise it's as flat and controlled as ever.

Dean rolls his eyes and pulls back the Kleenex a moment to check on the bleeding. It's more sluggish now, but still going, so he balls the tissue up a bit more and pushes it back.

"Then what, huh?" he asks. "What's the problem?"

"Me."

Dean startles slightly at the quiet statement, jerking his head to see Sam is now standing right beside him, having apparently moved in silently, and Dean was so intent on Castiel he hadn't noticed. Then the meaning of what Sam has just said hits him, and the blood freezes in his veins.

"You?" he says, in an incredulous tone, exaggerated to the point of calling Sam a moron for suggesting it. "What do you mean you?" There's a pit in his stomach that tells him his ridicule of the idea is a lost cause, that there's a reason behind Sam's conclusion, but it doesn't matter – he doesn't want to understand.

"I mean me," Sam says, and his eyes are dark and confident as he looks down at Castiel from where he stands a bare two feet away, close enough to reach out and touch the angel if he so chooses. "He's afraid of me." Sam leans forward and down a little, not quite putting his face in Castiel's, but suggesting the idea of it. "You're afraid of me, isn't that right, Cas?"

The words are deadly, tinted with mocking and an insolent smirk, layered over anger and hurt and accusation.

Castiel is rigid under Dean's fingers, a terrified coiled spring but with no punch to come out of it if push comes to shove. His face remains impassive, as much as it can, but a faint haunted look comes into his eyes, reminiscent, Dean thinks, of what he saw as Castiel watched Uriel, watched all that arrogant power and disregard for humanity parading around the room.

Cas is scared.

Of Dean's little brother.

"Come on!" Dean tries to brush it off, make light of it, how ludicrous it sounds, an _angel_ afraid of a human, afraid of _Sam_? "Why would you think...?"

"Look at him, Dean," Sam says. "He's all freaked, now that I'm standing here. A minute ago, he was fine. He's okay if it's just you around him, but if I get close..."

Sam suddenly reaches out a hand toward the angel's face – and Castiel flinches as if he expects a blow. Sam snorts, chuckles with mirthless laughter as he pulls his hand back, shaking his head slowly from side to side as he stares at the angel sitting on the bed, bloody and stiff and now, clearly shaken.

"The hell..." Dean mutters. He rallies briefly, somewhere in his panicked brain thinking that if he can just make fun of the situation to death, it'll go away. "That's stupid. What are we gonna do, anyway? I don't even how to hurt an angel."

Sam shrugs. It's flippant, uncaring – pissed off.

"Maybe you couldn't hurt him," he says casually. "But I bet I could."

"What, with that psychic mojo crap?" Dean snaps. "That only works on demons."

"Well I haven't tried it on anything else."

Sam's voice has dropped to a low, dangerous note, and there's a quiet chill in the room that ices over the pit in Dean's stomach. He's shell-shocked by the suggestion, the almost-threat of what Sam can do with the part of him that's a freak, and the idea that he might actually be willing to do it. Dean feels like he needs to say something, but he doesn't know what to say.

"Well," Sam says, and there's a sharp stab of spite in the word, "I'll just leave you two alone, shall I? Seeing as I'm causing such an issue here."

He's all pretend concern above boiling rage, and Dean's heart flutters in a fear of its own as Sam turns and stalks determinedly for the door. It's not that he's stepping out – it's where he might be going that has Dean worried, whom he might be planning on meeting with. He shouldn't even be thinking about that crap.

"Sam, wait!" Dean calls as his brother reaches the door, but Sam ignores him and opens it. "Sam! Sammy!" The door slams shut behind Sam, and Dean's insides have turned to a sour, restless water. His eyes snap back to Castiel's face, which has hardly moved a muscle but now fails utterly at hiding his apprehension. The sight only angers Dean more.

His fingers tighten roughly around Castiel's arm, and he feels himself put more pressure on the Kleenex than it needs, tilting Cas' head back a fraction.

"Is he right?" Dean demands. "Is that true?"

Castiel's eyes turn sorrowful, but the haunted look is still there, the nervous dismay tainting his expression.

"Dean..." he says slowly, too slowly for Dean's taste. Dean hurls away the Kleenex and grabs Cas by the front of his coat, ignoring the blood streaking it and staining his hands. Castiel makes a sound of pain in the back of his throat as he's jerked forward, but Dean is past caring.

"Dammit, Cas!" he spits out. "What the hell is wrong with you? You think we're the bad guys here? You think _Sam_ is...!"

He doesn't finish the sentence, just glares daggers at the angel, breathing hard. Castiel does something he doesn't do often – he looks away.

"It's true, isn't it, you son of a bitch," Dean says, furious. Now it all makes sense, the back and forth freak outs, why he wouldn't tell them what was wrong. Of course he wouldn't want to admit such a weakness, admit that the boy with the demon blood could actually do anything to him. If he really thinks Sam might try to hurt him... pain and rage twist into Dean in a sharp, hot knife. How _dare_ Cas feel that way about his little brother? How dare the universe conspire in ways that would make an angel be afraid of Sammy?

Sweet little Sammy, Dean's whole reason for existing, his messy-haired little brother whom he's protected over and over, gave his life for, went to Hell for. It's just not fair for Sam to... for Sam to be who is he is right now, for angels to condemn him for it. He's not supposed to be involved in any of this crap, he's not supposed to mind-banishing demons and spending half his evenings with one. Yes, Sam is screwing up six ways from Sunday right now, but he's still _Sam_ , and Dean is supposed to protect Sam. Watch out for Sammy, protect Sammy, it's his one directive in everything he's ever done...

"You stay the hell away from my brother," he hisses at Castiel, tightening his grip on the coat's lapels and pulling the angel's face closer to his. Castiel, who had relaxed minutely upon Sam's leaving the room, stiffens again in the face of his aggression, his eyes turning back to Dean and now looking at him as if _he_ is a threat. It's a fair cop, Dean supposes, the way he's acting, and it should probably make him feel guilty, which it does a little, but mostly it just makes him angrier. "You can't even treat him like he's a human, not a demon?"

Castiel tilts his head back slightly, leaning away from Dean as much he can.

"I tried... to hide..." he croaks.

"Well you're a lousy actor!" Dean snarls.

"I tried... to leave..."

"Well you sucked at that, too!"

"Dean..."

"Screw you, Cas!"

He shouts it in Castiel's face, his hands balled into fists in the bloody trench coat, half-shaking him in his fury.

"Let go... of me," Castiel orders him, and despite the fact that the angel's weak as a kitten right now and barely capable of stringing words together, the tone has all the authority and command in it that he's ever lobbed Dean's way. Oh, he thinks he's still giving the orders here? Fine.

Dean lets go of him with a flourish, and watches with a sort of perverse satisfaction as Castiel sways slightly, and then tips to the side, unable to keep himself upright without Dean's support. He collapses against the bedspread, eyes shutting briefly in pain or resignation, but when they open again and look back up at Dean, they're so filled with wariness and distress that the anger inside Dean cracks and guilt and sympathy come oozing out.

"Dammit, Cas," he huffs, running a hand through his hair and shaking his head. "You have to go and..."

Cas is trying to curl up again, withdrawing from Dean in his last option of defense, but his legs are still spilling off the edge of the bed, hanging there and twisting his body as he struggles to draw up his knees. Dean sighs.

"Here."

He reaches for the angel's legs, and the wedge of guilt drives deeper when Castiel tenses and flinches away from his touch, but he grabs him by the ankles anyway and carefully deposits the rest of him on the bed.

"You son of a bitch," he says again, without heat this time.

Cas looks back up at him, and now his expression is completely confused. He's not used to humans, is he, how often they change gears. He probably doesn't understand how Dean can practically spit in his face one minute and be gentle with him the next. Or why Dean is still cursing at him, even while he's helping him out. _Well buckle up, you bastard_ , Dean thinks. _It's only going to get bumpier from here_. This whole situation sucks, but maybe there's something here he needs to know if he's going to keep a hold of Sam, so Dean swallows down his anger and blame and tries to learn what he can.

"You've never acted weird around Sam before," Dean says. "What gives? You feel something off of him, is he changing? Getting worse?"

"He doesn't... feel different," Castiel murmurs. The angel is untensing, ever so slightly, now that Dean is talking and not yelling, but despite the change of pace, it's clear he still feels threatened.

"Then why the freak outs today?" Dean asks. Castiel looks as if the question makes him sick. He huddles into himself, his eyes going anywhere but Dean.

"Your brother is... very powerful," he says at last. It comes out as a hoarse whisper. "And right now... I am not." The last words are very soft, a painful, fearful admission, as if Cas is still worried that Dean might do something to him. Like what?

Get angry with him. Side with Sam, defend his brother like he's already done.

Let Sam kill an angel if he thinks it'll keep his brother safe.

The idea is tough and bitter going down, but deep inside Dean has to admit that if that's what Cas thinks, then he might not be too far off the mark. Sam's half off the reservation and Dean still doesn't trust him, but he loves his little brother, loves him so much he made a deal with a demon, and he barely knows the angel curled up miserably on his bedspread. Despite his alienness and general dickery, Dean has come to like Cas. Trust him a little, not wish him dead. But if it came down to it, Cas vs. Sam, hell _anybody_ vs. Sam...

Dean swallows hard and leans down to put a hand on Castiel's shoulder. Castiel cringes somewhat at the contact, so Dean sighs and pats the shoulder gently, trying to be reassuring.

"Look, I'm not... You're okay, Cas, you got that? You're safe here."

Castiel doesn't look entirely convinced. Dean supposes he deserves that. He takes a deep breath and asks his next question. It's probably not one Cas wants to hear, but he has to know the extent of what his brother is capable of.

"You think Sam could kill you?"

Cas tenses again at the question, and he's probably suspicious about why Dean asked it.

"I just need to know, Cas," he says quietly. "How far his mojo goes. Can my little brother kill angels?"

Castiel shakes his head, still looking away.

"I don't know," he whispers. "I don't want... to find out."

Dean doesn't want to find out, either. Especially not with Cas, little feathered nerd that he is. Dean feels badly now about screaming at him, jerking him around while he's in such a sorry state. What was that he was thinking earlier, about treating Cas square so he wouldn't be more of a dick to them when he gets better? Yeah, he's probably done himself a lot of favors in that department. He gives the angel's shoulder a gentle shake.

"You stay here," he says. "And rest up. You're safe, okay?"

Cas still looks at him warily, but he doesn't shrink away. Dean squeezes his shoulder like he would if it were Sam with a fever, then leaves him and walks into the bathroom to wash the dried blood off his hands. Fortunately he doesn't have any noticeable blood on his clothes from dragging Cas around – he hadn't thought to check when he'd opened the door for the manager, although the guy'd been so stoned he probably wouldn't have noticed. He'd better deal with the dead body himself, he thinks as he grabs the towel and dries off. Who knows where Sam is right now, or when he'll be coming back? If he comes back, Dean thinks quietly to himself, and then immediately locks the idea away as deep as he can. Of course Sam will come back – Dean's his brother.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

They've got bags in the Impala, which still has to be here because the keys are in his pocket. After he gets rid of the body though, he plans to drive around a bit, to see if there's any place in town likely for Sam to go. And he'll call him of course, but he doesn't hold out a lot of hope that Sam will answer the phone. He should have followed Sam right out the door, but he was angry, and he had to be sure of his answers, and he spent enough time dealing with Cas that Sam could be practically anywhere by now. He could be with that bitch, whom Dean swears he'll kill the next time he lays eyes on her, regardless of what Sam says.

Dean takes one last look at Cas before he heads out the door, but the angel doesn't look like he's going anywhere.

Dean locks the room and heads down the grungy hallway to the hotel parking lot. The air is close inside, and he's grateful to step out into the thinner and cooler night air, and then stops with shock at the sight of Sam sitting on the hood of the Impala, hugging his knees and gazing up at the stars. He hears the door though, and drops his gaze to take in Dean standing a short distance away. Dean's beyond grateful that Sam is still here, but the maligned expression that twists Sam's face makes Dean's insides turn uneasily, that combination Sam's wearing right now of angry hurt and flippant disdain not looking good on him. The first words out his mouth as Dean approaches hurt, too.

"Did you put your baby to bed?"

"Cas is resting," Dean says, because he doesn't know what else to say.

He can't dispute the baby part at times, Dean thinks ruefully. Guy doesn't even know how to stop a nosebleed. But it's the way Sam says it, the almost-sneer in his voice that disrespects Cas, which Dean can't really blame him for either, that makes him nervous, because Sam's generally not in the habit of being a dick, and he's coming off more aggressive than Dean would have expected. It's Dean's job to fly off the handle and shout and scream at people and act the jerk until he cools down. Sam's usually more level-headed, empathic, the guy who's just as likely to apologize to someone for their own douchiness than punish them for it.

Sam looks back up at the sky, a bitter smile curving his lips.

"Yeah. Well. Angels. Turned out to be real pieces of work, didn't they?"

"Look Sam," Dean says, his voice soft and with shared resentment in it, "You're right. I feel you, man. Angels are douches. They yank us back and forth, they don't tell us crap, and then they act like we should just fall over when they say so. But I don't..." He takes a moment to figure out how best to say it. "I think... I think this is more like, a... a misunderstanding, okay?"

Sam snorts and looks at him again, disbelieving.

"A misunderstanding?" he repeats, deliberately and with open skepticism. Dean holds up his hands, placating.

"Cas doesn't know you. Hell, he barely knows me."

"And that gives him the right?" Sam demands sharply. He flings a hand out, waving it toward their hotel room where Castiel lies. "Dean, he thinks I'm a monster!"

"Now we don't know what all he thinks," Dean says, and forges on even though Sam rolls his eyes and gives him an incredulous look. "Dude's all messed up and talking nonsense." It's a lie really, and a weak one at that, but if he can make Sam believe it, if he can make _himself_ believe it...

"Oh no, I think he was pretty clear," Sam says, and Dean winces inwardly at the anger in his brother's voice.

"Okay, you're right," he admits. "But... look, we still don't know for sure what goes on in his head. And he doesn't know you, Sam. He doesn't know you at all."

"No. He doesn't," Sam says pointedly. "Which just makes him more of a prejudiced dick."

Dean sighs. Sam's right, really he is, but no matter how much he loves his brother, Dean can see where Cas is coming from. Sam's freaky mojo is bad news, Ruby is bad news, and Sam is throwing himself at both of them, walking towards the edge of a cliff and it's like he wants to jump off it. Cas is a douche for acting like Sam's some evil demon, but Dean is more terrified than he'd like to admit that Sam is willingly heading that direction. And if he can just make Sam see that, maybe he can pull his little brother back from that cliff edge and make everything goddamn okay again.

"Sam..."

"'The boy with the demon blood,'" Sam imitates. "He never even gave me a chance, Dean. I'm not even human to him."

"That's not true," Dean says sharply, not caring if it's really true or not. If it is, it shouldn't be and anyway, Cas can't possibly be _that_ big of a dick, can he? Sam just stares back at him, looking furious and betrayed.

"I can't believe you're defending him," he snaps. And Dean shouldn't be defending Cas, not if he wants to get Sam to listen to him. He should be trashing the angel and all his uptight dickery and then Sam would feel the solidarity, would hopefully understand and know unshakably in his heart that Dean still loves him, would still do anything for him, and that he doesn't need to prove anything or whatever it is he's trying to do by running off to exorcise demons with his mind-powers. But the image of Cas flinching away when Dean tried to help him flashes through his head, makes him feel guilty, and when he opens his mouth he ends up trying to explain why he's not verbally beating the angel down right now.

"We gotta cut him a _little_ slack. He's half-dead and all by himself."

And he can't even call one of his brothers for help, Dean suddenly realizes. Cas is completely on his own without enough strength to knock over a house of cards, and that effectively leaves him at the mercy of two people he has almost no reason to believe particularly care about him, one of whom has freaky powers he can kill with and hangs out with a demon on the side, while the other barely tolerates angels and is abjectly devoted to the first. No wonder the freaking out.

"And I'm your brother!" Sam shouts, jumping off the hood of the car and standing with his shoulders bunched up aggressively, self-righteousness in every tense line of his body language.

"Which is why I'm trying to help you, Sammy!" Dean's tone is almost pleading, except he's angry, too. Why is any of this goddamn happening? Why is Sam pulling this crap? What the hell happened to his little brother?

"Help me? By taking his side? By agreeing with him that I'm evil?" Sam spreads his hands out in persecution and it's obvious he thinks Dean is rejecting him. Are they even speaking the same language anymore?

"No, you idiot! I'm saying he's wrong!" Dean shouts. Sam looks at him skeptically and rubs a hand over his forehead, growing so tired of it all. If Sam would just _stop_ like Dean told him to... "Look, you're... you're scaring me, Sam, okay? I mean, I want to trust you. Don't you ever believe for a minute that I don't want to. It's just hard to lately, the way you keep going off. You spend too much time with that bitch, you trust her..."

Sam's nostrils flare and his expression crumples further into anger, born of determined possessiveness. Dean's said the wrong thing, ragging on about Ruby again. Sam seems to really care for her, and that causes a sick turn in Dean's gut, that his brother has feelings for a demon. That his brother _wants_ a soulless bitch with black eyes, wants her so badly he's fighting with his big brother about it.

"Ruby's done more for me than any angel ever has," Sam practically snarls.

"She's a demon, Sam!" Dean can't stop himself from yelling. Sam's lips twist in disgust.

"And Cas is better? What, because he's an angel? Because they're so pure, and... _righteous_." The word rolls off Sam's tongue like a curse, a loathsome maggot chewing on a rotting apple, and Dean remembers when Sam used it last, lamenting over how the angels weren't what he'd expected, and how Dean had said there was nothing more dangerous than some ass who thinks he's on a holy mission. Looking into Sam's eyes, Dean can see that Sam meant him to remember. "You said it yourself Dean, they're jerks. And if we're lucky, God does hate them."

For some reason, the assertion that God should hate Cas pisses Dean off.

"Yeah?" he snaps. "Well Cas saved our asses tonight, so maybe we could at least appreciate that!"

Sam snorts and rolls his eyes.

"Oh yeah, he _saved_ us from a demon," he says, the air-quotes audible in his voice.

"What, you think the bleeding collapse was just for show?"

"I could have taken it myself, Dean," Sam says scornfully. "Hell, maybe you could have taken it. We didn't need him to come rescue us."

"The fact that he killed it means you didn't have to, Sammy," Dean said, and his voice has taken on a pleading note. "Your mind powers or whatever, they're bad news."

"Oh yeah? And why do you think that, Dean? Because Castiel told you?" Sam retorts, crossing his arms, shutting the two of them out. Dean groans inwardly. It's true that Cas was the one to tell Dean Sam had to stop, but damned if Dean wouldn't have decided that using demon mojo was probably a bad idea on his own. Whatever the hell Azazel was planning, it certainly can't be good, and here's Sam walking right in the prescribed footsteps of it.

"Sam, just 'cause Cas said it doesn't mean –"

"You think he cares that he just killed some guy?" Sam interrupts, waving an arm through the air in a wild, angry gesture. "Not just the demon, but a guy who looks like he should be out golfing on Saturdays and attending his kids' weddings? You think any of that matters to him?"

"What?"

The question is unexpected. Does Cas care about the human victim when he smites a demon? Hell if Dean knows, but he has to admit, Cas probably doesn't. He's an angel, they're demons, smite, smite, smite. It's probably rule number one on the big glowing rulebook of Heaven and given how little emotion Cas expresses on a regular basis, it's doubtful that he even spares a thought for the life of the host. Caring doesn't seem to be in the angelic job description, just following orders and frequently acting smug. Except that last bit's more of a Uriel thing, and Dean remembers Cas talking to him quietly that day in the park, admitting his own doubts and how he'd wanted Dean to save that town.

And can Dean call himself blameless? He doesn't think about it half the time either, not anymore, because he's killed so many demons at this point that he's simply had to stop thinking about the victims inside. If he spent too much time on sympathy and trying to carefully save each possessee, he'd end up dead in less than a week. Anytime a hunter held back a demon would use it to his advantage. And a lot of the time, the human wouldn't survive the exorcism anyway – demons rode their stolen bodies hard, not caring what they damaged, and the longer they had control of the host, the less likely it was that the human could recover. So Dean had tossed aside the guilt over killing the human, and at the end of the day, called it what had to be done. Was that right? Maybe not. But it kept him alive.

"My powers can save the life of the host!" Sam was continuing, an impassioned plea that Dean listen to what Sam thought was the good side of his abilities. " _Ruby_ cares about that."

His trust in the demon bitch sets Dean off again.

"The hell she does! She's using you, Sam! When are you gonna figure that out?"

"And what are the angels doing, Dean!" Sam all but shouted. "You don't think Castiel is using you? What about 'the moment you stop being useful you get turned to dust?'"

"That was Uriel!" Dean protested. "You think Cas would let him do that?"

"You think he wouldn't?" Sam challenged. "You think he wouldn't kill either one of us if they ordered him to? He's not a person, Dean, he's a damn robot. All he does is follow orders."

Dean's jaw clenched.

"Now who's the prejudiced dick?" he demanded.

Sam shook his head, sighing resignedly, that same bitterness still in his face and his voice.

"At least I waited until after I met him to form an opinion. He was set against me from the start. 'The boy with the demon blood,'" Sam repeats. "I'm not even human to him. And not that that matters. He was gonna to destroy a whole town just to get at a witch."

"I told you that was a test," Dean says snappishly. The bursts of anger, the shouting on both sides are starting to wind down, but they've left behind a quiet acid, percolating between them.

"Yeah?" Sam shoves his hands in his pockets. "Do whatever you said, right? And what if you'd said, sure, waste 'em. What would he have done then?"

"He wanted to save them, " Dean hisses, his throat getting tight as he realizes what Sam's next point will be. And he doesn't want to acknowledge it, but he has to admit it's right.

"So what?" Sam says, and yeah, he's going there. "He won't do what he wants. He'll only do what they tell him to. So how does that make it any better?"

It doesn't. If Cas and Uriel had nuked that town, whether Cas wanted it or not, over a thousand people would still be dead, and how would Cas' wishes have mattered then? Dean swallows hard as he thinks of all the orders Dad gave him, and how he followed them whether he wanted to or not. He doesn't remember Dad ever giving him quite that kind of an order, but... what would he have done if he had? Dean had been a soldier, too. And what does that make him now?

"I don't know, Sam," he says wearily. "But just... we gotta stop this, man. Angels and demons – they're tearing us apart."

"Yeah," Sam says shortly, the word dropping blunt and final. The one thing they've agreed in the last few minutes. Sam taps frenetic fingers against his right arm and glares out into the blackness. Then he holds his out hand and says in a rough tone,

"Gimme the keys. I'm gonna go down to the gas station for a bit."

Dean sighs. Normally he'd be thrilled at the deflection, which meant they could stop arguing and wouldn't have to talk about their feelings. But he can't help but feel that something is wrong, very wrong between them, and shouldn't talking be the way to fix it? But they've talked all right, and what good did it do? And Dean doesn't want to talk anymore, because he doesn't know what to say. So he takes the change of subject, shaking his head.

"You can't take off yet," he points out. "We still gotta get rid of that body."

Sam narrows his eyes, irritated.

"Castiel can get rid of the body," he says. "Let him clean up his own mess."

Dean resists the urge to put his forehead in his hand, irritation of his own rising at Sam's persistent stubbornness.

"Come on, Sam," he says. "You know Cas isn't gonna be up for that. We gotta move the sucker while it's still dark, and we need the car to do it."

Sam flings up his hands, refusing to give in.

"Fine!" he snaps. "Then I'll walk."

He turns away from Dean and moves toward the exit to the parking lot with long, swift strides.

"Sam," Dean begins, but Sam only throws over his shoulder,

"Have fun with your new friend," in a sort of spiteful tone, and in a few seconds he's stepped out of the lights of the motel lot and turned behind the scraggly patch of trees that sits beside the highway, letting the darkness swallow him up.

Dean thinks about running after him, refusing to let him go, but how would that end? In punches and more shouting? In words being spoken that could never be taken back? A part of Dean is terrified that if he goes after Sammy now, if he pushes, he might sunder what little they have left and break his relationship with his brother forever. So he swallows down what he's feeling as much as he can and goes to get bags out of the trunk.

ooo00ooo

Dean walks back into the motel room with a wad of plastic and heavy heart. He casts his gaze about the room for any obvious threats, and he half-thinks the angel might be gone, despite his weakened condition, but there's still a dark shape on the far bed where Dean planned to sleep tonight. Castiel is still and silent, and neither Dean's entrance nor the rustling of the bags provokes a reaction. After several seconds of careful study, Dean can see him breathing, though – a slight rise and fall of his narrow shoulders just visible in the faint light filtering in through the gap in the curtains. Dean kneels beside the body of the demon and tries not to think that it's the body of a human, too.

It's always more difficult by himself, disposing of a body, but it's not like he hasn't done it before, and he gets Extra Crispy out to the Impala unobtrusively and in short order. He drives for some 30 miles before he dumps the dead guy in a remote patch of woods and starts back to the motel. He'll have been gone over an hour by the time he gets back, but he doesn't expect Sam to get back before him. He doesn't expect Sam back at the motel at all tonight, actually, not with Cas in the room. Sam probably called Ruby from the gas station, if he even bothered to go down to the gas station, and is spending the night with her. Dean stomach clenches at the thought, but what the hell is he going to do about it?

Even if he were willing to kick Cas out, the damage has already been done.

Sam's probably telling Ruby all about it, and she's probably 'sympathizing' with him, acting all concerned and attentive and trashing the angel like Dean couldn't, probably trashing Dean too, and drawing Sam deeper into her clutches and the lure of demonic power. Dean hits the steering wheel in frustration, angry at Ruby, angry at Sam, angry at Cas, and angry at himself for not being able to fix the whole damn tangled mess. He turns Metallica up on the radio as loud as he can stand and screams down the highway at ten miles over the speed limit, half-hoping for a cop to stop him with a ticket, because he could do with the distraction.

No such luck.

He gets back to the motel room feeling beaten and worn, and this time turns on the light when he steps inside, his eyes roving over the floor for any sign of blood. The burning of Castiel's smite seemed to have sort of cauterized the mess that came out of the eyeballs, and that was the body's only obvious injury, anyway. In any case, the floor is clean, at least as clean as it was to begin with, and Dean doesn't have to spend an hour trying to scrub stains out of the shag. Castiel doesn't awaken at the sudden glare of the light. He doesn't move or speak or even twitch as Dean walks around to the other side of the bed to check on him.

He's huddled stiff and motionless against the thin coverlet, curled into himself protectively as he was when Dean left. His eyes are shut, but there are lines of pain in his face, as if even in unconsciousness he can't fully escape the infirmity that plagues him. It looks like his nose started up again at some point, but the sideways streaks down his cheek are long-dried and it isn't bleeding now.

"Cas," Dean says softly, but the angel doesn't react.

Dean sighs and slumps down into one of the spindly little chairs that he imagines are supposed to go with the dining table, but were for some reason over by the window when they checked in and they hadn't bothered moving them yet. As he sits, he catches sight of the brown paper bags that had once been a celebratory dinner what feels like ages ago. He had set them to the side while trying to deal with Cas, and now they're sitting forlornly on the floor, their contents probably stone cold. There's no microwave in the room, and while there might be a communal one down by the front desk, Dean's too weary to wander down there and deal with the stoner manager again. Besides, who knows how clean the thing would be at a place like this?

So Dean gets up and retrieves the bags, leaving Sam's on the table in case his brother wants it later, then turns off the room light, settles back in the chair, and works his way through the cold grease while watching some Spanish soap opera on the television that's practically soft core porn. The onion rings have gone soggy but the burger's still pretty good, and despite everything his stomach's still hungry, so it's hardly the worst dinner he's ever eaten. The prize for that probably goes to the Nutmeg Macaroni Surprise he made one evening when he was eleven and Dad had been gone three days on a hunt. Dean finishes the onion rings and keeps staring at the TV, tired but fully disinterested in going to bed. He needs a distraction, and since this is apparently a marathon of busty crazy chicks and asshats with sprayed on gray hair, he keeps watching for the next couple of hours, his mind glazing over as he tries to forget the situation with Sam and instead focuses on the main character's breasts and how her bra color is constantly changing between shots.

He's maybe four episodes in and as near as Dean can tell, Esperonda or whatever the hell her name is has just discovered that Ricardo is cheating on her with his drug dealer and her occasionally-a-prostitute sister. They have this big dramatic argument, with a lot of really fast Spanish and tears, and it culminates in Esperonda pulling a gun and shooting Ricardo in the head. Dean's got the volume turned pretty low, but the gunshot's kind of loud, and he turns his head to see if it woke Cas. To his surprise, the angel is already awake, frozen motionless in the same position he's been in for the past few hours, but with open eyes, the light from the television glimmering on them as he watches Dean warily.

Dean starts and pushes the mute button on the remote, silencing Esperonda's wails and the yelling that starts up when the round lady he thinks is supposed to be her mother comes in.

"Jeez Cas, creepy much?" Dean says as casually as he can, covering for the fact that the silent Kubrick stare is kind of freaking him out. Cas doesn't answer, just keeps watching him, so Dean clears his throat and puts the remote on the windowsill. "How long you been awake?" he asks.

"Nineteen minutes," Castiel says hoarsely. He still looks like somebody ran him over with a truck, and he's obviously not 100 percent or he probably would've just taken off by now, but his voice is steadier and it doesn't sound like he's struggling just to get words out anymore. Dean checks his watch – it's just past midnight, so Cas got maybe three and a half hours of sleep. Considering just how messed up he'd been when they got here, his mojo comes back fast. He'll probably be back to normal by morning.

Which means if Dean wants to have a chat, he'd better do it now before flyboy gets his zap back and nips out altogether.

Dean grabs the remote again and flicks the TV off, blacking out the image of Ricardo's funeral and Esperonda in a mourning outfit that shows way too much cleavage, her eyes big and brown as she twitches nervously at the gravesite. He puts the remote back on the windowsill. Then he gets up and walks around the bed to turn on the lamp that sits on the end table. He doesn't miss the fact that Cas finally moves as he does so, turning so he can follow Dean with his eyes and pushing himself into a sitting position against the weathered headboard. When the light flicks on, Dean notices with another blip of surprise that the dried blood that had been all over him is gone, leaving his face clean and his clothes spotless, if slightly rumpled. He wonders if it's a conscious thing, if Castiel just cleaned himself up on purpose to look more capable and dignified, or if this sort of stuff just fades over time when you're an angel. Maybe both.

Dean sits down on Sam's unoccupied bed and levels his gaze at Cas, who looks back at him steadily, though his shoulders are tense and he's clearly uncomfortable with the scrutiny. He might have trusted enough to rest here, especially since he didn't really have any other options, but he obviously hasn't forgotten Dean's fury at him, nor fully swallowed the reassurances he'd been offered after the manhandling. Dean could say something now, try to soothe his concerns again, but there's no guarantee he'd accept that either, and anyway the conversation they're about to have is probably in no way going to be encouraging to him. Besides, he gets to stare, so why shouldn't Dean have that privilege?

Dean clears his throat again and to hell with it, cuts straight to the chase.

"If Uriel tried to kill Sam, what would you do?"

He's taken Castiel off-guard with the question, he can tell, no matter how quickly those eyes turn impassive, and Dean notes that he's gotten a little better at reading the angel lately. Good. There is a long pause while Castiel stares at him, debating internally, Dean thinks, about what best to say.

"It would depend on whether or not he were acting on Heaven's orders," Castiel says at last, slowly, but with a hint of defiance, as if to remind Dean that Heaven's orders are paramount and Cas won't be cowed into ignoring that no matter how drained of angel battery he gets.

"If he wasn't, you'd stop him," Dean says, and Cas nods, his eyes hard and waiting for what comes next.

"But if it was Heaven's orders," and Dean puts just a little, contemptuous emphasis on the last two words, "you'd let him, huh?"

Again Castiel doesn't answer for several moments. Finally his lips part and he says quietly into the room,

"I don't know."

Dean should be happy that Cas even wavers, be impressed that the angel would even consider going against his orders, the damn holy writs he gets that are so stupid special to him. But he's really not. All he sees is a man without conviction, who hasn't made a choice that he can live with in his gut, and since that choice concerns Dean's younger brother's life, Dean's more than a little pissed about it.

"Well you better know," Dean says sharply, and a little louder than he intended. "'Cause the way things are going, that might happen someday, so you better damn well decide now."

He's practically giving the angel an ultimatum, which is probably a bad idea. In fact, it's likely to push Cas further away from them. _So much for you're safe here_ , Dean thinks bitterly. He's angry at Cas and Heaven and himself, and a sharp splash of guilt surges into his throat for what feels like a betrayal of his previous assurances. But dammit, if Cas isn't on their side, if he'd be willing to hurt one of them, Dean's not going to take that lying down. Castiel's eyes remain studiously detached, but he can practically hear the gears working in the angel's head, thinking _I am_ _safe here so long as I am not against you_. It comes off cruel, but it's true.

"I see no reason that Heaven would order his death," Cas says carefully, his tone painstakingly neutral. It's diplomacy at its finest, not changing his stance but attempting to remove the issue altogether. Dean snorts, not buying the circumvention.

"Yeah no, why would the angels wanna kill a guy with demon blood?"

Cas' gaze is still impassive.

"If Heaven considered your brother a demon, he would have already been dispatched."

The point is hardly comforting.

"Yeah?" Dean snaps. "And what about if I don't stop him, you will, huh? Is that just another test?"

Castiel looks faintly pained at the accusation in Dean's demand.

"Your brother's choices are not for Heaven to command," Cas rumbles softly, his fingers tightening on the edges of his trench coat. "His path is dangerous, but it is his own. We will only stop him if he... if he becomes a soldier of Hell."

The description is a bad taste in Dean's mouth, a twisting clench to his gut. Cas looks down briefly, but then back up, resolute.

"I have been issued no orders to harm him, nor do I wish to," he says firmly. "He is still one of my Father's human children. But his actions are reprehensible. I will not condone them."

It's a fair statement, really, especially since Dean can hardly be said to condone what Sam's doing, either. He notes that Cas called Sam human, wonders if he can bring that up to Sam later and get his brother to believe it. But even if Cas hasn't gotten orders to hurt Sam and doesn't want to, that still doesn't change the fact that he's already been threatened.

"No orders to hurt Sam, huh?" he asks. "Then Uriel wanting to dust him, that's just an executive decision, then?"

The words are sharp and bitter off his tongue, and the angel's head tilts fractionately to one side, his eyes narrowing. It's an indication of surprise, concern, and for once Castiel looks less worried for his own skin and more troubled about what was just said. It occurs to Dean that they never brought up Uriel's threat to Cas. He may not even know about it.

"Uriel threatened Sam?" he asks gravely. Apparently that wasn't information Castiel was privy to, and that does lift him a couple of notches back up on Dean's special, made-for-Cas meter of least-amount-of-angelic-douchiness. Dean nods.

"Yeah."

Castiel frowns, gazing pensively at the blank television in the corner.

"I will have to speak with him when I return to the garrison."

His tone is as calm and unemotional as if he's discussing whether or not it'll rain tomorrow, but there's... _something_ in his face or his voice or the casual drumming of his fingertips against his coat that makes Dean shiver internally and suddenly feel extremely glad that Castiel is not his boss. He flashes back to that night at Bobby's house, when Cas finally got fed up with his crap and told him to show some respect, the power that came off that grim dream version of the guy who reached into Hell and hauled Dean back out into the dirt and fight of life again. Dean swallows hard and nods again, scratching the back of his head for something to do.

"Yeah okay, good. That'd... that'd be cool."

Cas swivels to look back at him, and his eyes are dark and serious.

"I must apologize for my brother's impropriety," he almost growls. "It is not his place to make idle war on those whose lives we touch."

"Only you get to make the good threats, right?" Dean says snarkily before he can stop himself. Because all things aside, Cas _did_ threaten to toss his ass back into Hell if he didn't shape up.

For an instant, Castiel looks puzzled, and then it's clear he picks up on what Dean is thinking, either because he's remembering the incident in question or because he just took it off the top of Dean's mind. The second possibility is still a little creepy, but to Dean's amazement Cas' lips twitch up just slightly, lending amusement to his features after hours of stoicism and anxiety.

"I made no threat to put you back in Hell," he says mildly. "I merely informed you I was _capable_ of doing so."

And Dean actually laughs, a breathless chuckle that seems to startle Cas before the angel relaxes again, looking more at ease than he's been all evening. Dean eyes him critically, thinking about the difference between Cas and Uriel, about how even back in his dream at Bobby's he hadn't fully thought the angel was serious, or he would have been freaked enough to start seriously researching how to kill the guy there and then. Not that he would have found much, Dean thought ruefully. The lore didn't spend much time detailing angelic weaknesses. Or any time, actually, though it did go on about all the crazy stuff they could do. Cas suddenly turns somber again, and says quietly,

"Where is Sam?"

Dean shrugs, a sigh escaping him.

"He took off. Probably with that demon bitch again."

Castiel practically winces at the mention, and Dean wonders if he feels at all guilty for his part in Sam's decision to sleep elsewhere tonight. Maybe, because he looks down at his lap and his eyes seem regretful. A sudden wild and optimistic thought strikes Dean, and he suggests hopefully,

"You could go torch her head off."

Cas shakes his head slightly, looking almost ashamed.

"She keeps herself well hidden."

Hex bags. Right. He keeps forgetting just how many talents his brother's charming seductress has. They're not gonna find her through Sam either, because he's noticed his brother always turns off his phone when he's with her, so Dean can't track them. And even if he could find them, Sam'd go crazy defending her, which is why Dean hasn't killed her himself yet, even though Dean taking her out would almost certainly just make things between him and Sam worse. And burning out Ruby's brains certainly wouldn't do Cas any favors in regards to Sam's opinion of him, either, or of the angels in general. In any case, Ruby's not dying tonight, so Dean might as well shelve that pipe dream for now.

Cas shifts awkwardly in his position on the bed and glances back up at Dean, still looking uncomfortably contrite.

"I'm well enough to go now," he says, and Dean catches the implication, that he'll leave if Dean doesn't want him here, although Dean gets the idea that he's less spooked about staying, now. Reminiscing about empty hell-threats with Heaven's most wrecked and the solidarity of wanting to kill demons together'll do that.

"You get your zap back yet?" Dean asks.

It takes Castiel a moment to work out what Dean is asking. Then he shakes his head.

"No."

"Then just stay here. Sam isn't coming back tonight, I can tell you that much. And the Spanish channel is running some really trashy stuff."

Dean gets up and heads for the remote, snatching it off the windowsill. Castiel's eyebrows draw together in confusion.

"The program you were watching earlier?" he asks as Dean returns to the bed and flops down, flicking the power button and putting the saga of Esperonda and her D+ cups back onscreen. It looks like Esperonda made it out of the funeral okay, because she's now jabbering to her sister in her underwear while the two of them hold up various shiny dresses. Cas' facial muscles go rigid, and he looks down quickly.

"It doesn't look particularly diverting," he mumbles, and Dean snorts as the camera pans over the lacy trim on Esperonda's bra.

"Hey, this is the epic story of one woman's battle to... um..." Dean stumbles, not really clear on what the program is actually about. "Survive murder and drugs and her harpy mother," he finishes hastily. "Serious human drama. And hey look, they're going to church."

He waves at the screen, where Esperonda and her sister walk into this big stone cathedral, apparently having picked out the dresses they wanted. Castiel raises his head and observes the action onscreen seriously, frowning somewhat as the women sit down in the pews and take off their jackets, showcasing their assets nicely.

If anybody gets to corrupt an angel, it's going to be Dean Winchester.

ooo00ooo

Cas watches vaguely for about another twenty minutes, but when the show ends and an ad starts while the next one is queuing up, Dean glances over at him to find his eyes are shut, his head tipped sideways onto his shoulder as he slumps against the headboard. Apparently he still needs more time in Shangri-La before he gets all of his juice back. Or maybe he's just trying to escape crappy Spanish soaps. Dean rubs his eyes and turns off the TV, admittedly getting bored of Esperonda and tired enough to think about giving into sleep himself. He leaves the remote on the end table and goes into the bathroom to brush his teeth, and when he comes out he cringes at the awkward position Cas in. Do angels get neck cricks? Probably not, but Dean can't in good conscience leave him sitting like that, even if moving him requires becoming Carol Brady for five seconds.

"Cas, hey," Dean hisses at him, but the angel is well and truly out of it again, so Dean settles for grabbing the sides of his trench coat and maneuvering him onto his back. He makes sure Cas' head ends up on the pillow, but he's not going to pat his head or toss a blanket on him or any of that sappy crap. Besides, dude's wearing three layers and it's not even cold out. Dean moves quickly away and gets his sleep gear out of his duffel, coming back to turn out the light before he changes. He wonders if angels can see in the dark as he drops his trousers and realizes with a pang that they probably can. Fortunately the one he's got is comatose, and he can hear the soft, steady breathing that comes from the mattress over as he pulls on a pair of sweats and climbs into bed. He huddles up under the sheet, listening to it, and although he wishes it were Sam's breathing he were listening to, it's still nice at least to have somebody over there, to share a room with the presence of someone he trusts.

He realizes what he just thought an instant before sleep takes him.

When Dean wakes up, Cas is gone.

* * *

One more chapter! I hope people are enjoying this.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

The alley is dark and damp, with the smells of gasoline and cigarette smoke lurking beneath the heavier stench of sulfur. There are four demons, poised to begin a ritual that will open up geysers of hellfire in the city and surrounding countryside, and Dean thinks that they've caught them by surprise until the bulky, imposing figure that seems to be leading them turns and says calmly,

"Why don't you join us? We can always use more sacrifices."

Dean curses and brings up his shotgun up to his shoulder faster than a blink – but it doesn't matter, the damn demon just waves his hand and the gun flies off into a pile of garbage cans, raising a loud clatter. An instant later, Dean feels himself flung backwards, as powerfully as if he were merely one of the dry leaves littering the streets. He gasps as he slams into the hard brick wall, the breath driven from his lungs as his back protests the rough treatment. He hears Sam give a yelp – of shock or pain Dean isn't certain – and then hears an echoing crash as his brother hits the wall alongside him. The demon laughs, and he's got reason to, because right now Team Winchester looks likes it's about to lose to a lightning round of sudden death mind mojo.

Dean doesn't laugh, partly because he can't with the air all rushed out of his lungs, and partly as there's no sense giving away the ace up their sleeve before it hits.

Because just as suddenly as they've been screwed, the tide of battle turns in their favor, because Castiel appears behind big demon douche and clamps a hand onto the back of his head. There's a burning smell and a roar of rage, and Dean finds he can move and breathe again, Sam too. They launch themselves off of the wall, Dean pulling Ruby's knife and throwing himself onto the closest demon, while Sam uncorks a flask of holy water and makes the black-eyed woman charging him scream in agony. In his peripheral vision, Dean registers that boss demon manages to turn in place and bring his arm up to shove off Cas' attack. There's a look of surprise on the angel's face as he's knocked backward several paces, but he recovers quickly and raises a hand to meet that of the demon, more mind mojo at work. Dean's quarry swings at him, but he dodges and grabs the guy's arm, using his momentum to shove him past.

Dean spins and follows with the knife, ramming it into the demon's spine and up through the center of his chest. He gives a howl and jerks in his death throes, orange light flickering on the damp walls and lighting them up rich red. They pale as a white light rushes out from behind Dean, accompanied by a shout that sounds like Enochian. Dean starts to turn, to see what Cas and Sam are doing, but a body slams sideways into his and for the second time in as many minutes the breath goes out of him. He twists in a grip that's trying to propel him back into the wall and elbows a forty-something woman with mousy brown hair in the face as hard as he can. She flinches but doesn't let go, growling at him as her eyes flip over to a glistening black.

She's pinning his knife arm against his side, but the other has some wiggle room, so he drops the blade into his left hand instead and stabs upward, catching her in the stomach. She shrieks and flails and sparks yellow-orange as Dean shoves her body off the blade and pushes back toward the rest of the fight. Sam is grappling with the last lesser demon, an exorcism trying to spill past his lips, but her fist slams into his throat and he reels back, hacking. He hits her again with holy water before she can press the advantage though, and she snarls and screams and claws at her face with her hands. Cas is similarly locked with big ugly, his slighter frame bending backwards as the demon struggles to shove him to the ground, but angelic strength keeps him upright and as Dean watches, his right hand snakes back upward and his palm hits the broad forehead.

White light erupts with a sizzling sound and the big demon lets out a bellow, but this time it sound more like a cry of pain and fear than anger. His hulking fist clouts the side of Castiel's face, but Cas hangs on grimly, his features set and determined. The smite provides a background of flashing light and hideous wailing as Dean runs at the demon trying to kill his brother. The flask of holy water is empty, and Sam rolls to the side as the demon snatches up a piece of metal debris and stabs forward wildly. The trashed bar or pipe or whatever it is embeds itself into the brick, crushing mortar and stone and wrenching out a divot where Sam's head had been not a moment before. Sam sidesteps past her, moving back toward Dean, but the demon abandons her garbage weapon and spins to punch him solidly in the collar bone. Sam gives an _oof_ and staggers, though he manages to keep on toward his brother. Two steps and Dean is between them, putting himself in front of Sam likes he's done more times than he can count.

"Hey, bitch!" Dean yells, and she turns toward him just in time to get a knife blade buried in her chest.

Again the orange light show and her fingers go for his face in her final moments, but they never reach flesh and she's dead in short order, sliding backwards off the knife. Dean drops his arm, breathing hard, and shoots his eyes over to Sam who's already recovering, stepping further back and massaging the side of his chest, gulping in air in a similar fashion. The screaming and sizzling flares of white light have faded from behind them, and Dean looks past Sam to see that Cas has won, the body of the lead demon stretched out at his feet, adorned with the classic burnt-out eyes of death-by-angel-smiting. Cas stands above it, head down, his shoulders hunched forward and one hand out as if to steady himself, reaching blindly for the wall. As Dean watches, the other hand goes up to catch at his temple, and then he sways, slowly tipping forward but he's not catching himself...

"Sam!" Dean yells, because Sam is closer, and his brother spins and lunges forward just in time to keep Cas from landing face first on the pavement. Sam grabs at his shoulders, beneath the arms, arresting his downward movement and jerking him back up. Cas gives a groan at the jolt and slumps against Sam, his head lolling sideways and his eyes shut. Dean is there a second later and hooks Cas' right arm into his, lifting some of the weight off of Sam and giving his brother the opportunity to move to Cas' left.

"Cas?" Sam prods gently, trying to see if the angel is awake. Cas grunts and shivers slightly in their grip.

"I... I..." The words come out stammered and slurred, Cas' speaking apparatus clearly not cooperating with him all the way. "No'... so... po'erful..." Cas mutters indistinctly, and Dean wonders whether he's talking about the demon or himself. Its eyes had been black, not white or yellow, and while he himself can attest that the damn thing had packed a punch, Dean can't help noting that only three weeks ago the angel had smote a comparable demon without so much as a blink. Now Cas shivers and moans and leans heavily on his human companions, his head drooping low.

"Come on, let's get to you to the car," Sam says with soft concern, and they move forward, supporting the angel between them. Cas makes it about thirty feet, halfway to where the Impala is parked, before Dean feels him go completely slack, his feet dragging on the asphalt.

"Dammit," Dean curses under his breath. He and Sam hitch Castiel a little higher up and keep walking, grateful for the cloak of darkness and the quiet of back alleys that keep them hidden from bug-eyed stares and calls to the cops. When they get to the car, Dean shifts Cas' weight further against Sam, and Sam keeps him braced against the driver's door while Dean opens up the backseat. They push Cas awkwardly onto the cushions and the angel falls against them bonelessly, flopping sideways like a rag doll.

"Stay with him," Dean orders Sam. "I've gotta go back and trash that altar."

Sam nods and Dean heads quickly back among the darkened buildings, casting a last glance over his shoulder before slipping into the deeper shadows once more. Sam's safe beside the car, shrugging out of his jacket, and Dean's chest loosens at the sight of his little brother, unscathed and intact. He makes it back to the site of the ritual without incident and retrieves his shotgun from where it landed in the pile of bins. For a moment he considers using it as a blunt object, but after looking around, he grabs up the piece of metal that almost impaled Sam's head instead. Then he marches over to the wooden table covered in blood and bones and squat little urns of God-knows-what and smashes the crap out of it. The pottery breaks into tiny shards and powders and fluids come oozing out. Dean kicks the table over for good measure, then dumps a healthy dose of lighter fluid on the busted mess and sets it all ablaze. Then he hurries away from the brightly shifting fire and the four corpses strewn across the ground, three of them bloody from stab wounds and one with its eyes burnt out.

When he gets back to the car, Sam is standing sentry near the backseat, though his face lights up in relief as Dean comes striding across the pavement and he quickly makes for the front passenger seat.

"Let's get out of here," Dean says fervently as he slides into the driver's seat and turns the key in the ignition. He spares a quick glance at Cas in the back, who is lying still with his eyes shut, his head pillowed on Sam's jacket. He's also been pushed further back into the seat so there's less chance he'll slide off if Dean brakes too hard. Dean adjusts the rear view mirror slightly and pulls away from the curb, heading back toward the highway that'll take them to the motel.

It's only about a twenty minute drive back to where they're staying, down a mostly smooth stretch of road, and it doesn't take Dean long to get up to fifty, the dark shapes of trees and houses whipping past in the night. They drive in silence, Sam occasionally peering into the backseat to check on Castiel, who hasn't moved an inch. Dean glances at the gauges and notes that they need to get Baby some more gas soon. And she ought to be due for an oil change, he remembers. Maybe they'll take her up to Bobby's and he'll take a little time to give her some love. They haven't been that way in a couple of weeks, and God knows Bobby could use the company, rolling around in his house these days like a depressed windup toy.

Dean slows slightly to take a curve, its metal railing winking in the Impala's headlights.

From beside him, Sam suddenly says,

"Crap, he's bleeding."

Dean's eyes flick up to the rear view mirror, but it's set too high for him to get a good look. He risks a quick glance over his right shoulder as they pass under a streetlamp, and in the warm yellow light he can see the dark stream now oozing out of Cas' nose and probably staining Sam's jacket. Dean is glad it's the jacket and not the seat.

"There should still be some napkins in the glove box," he reminds Sam, and his brother pops it open and pulls out a fistful of flimsy white paper. Sam balls it up and twists around, leaning into the backseat with it. Dean turns his attention back to the road, but after a few moments he hears a groan from behind him, and Sam says softly,

"Cas?"

"Wha'... wha' are you..?"

Dean glances back again, just in time to see Cas bat feebly at Sam's arm, making a confused sound in the back of his throat.

"You're okay, Cas," Sam says soothingly. "I'm just stopping the bleeding. Relax."

"Mm..."

Cas goes quiet, and Dean switches determinedly to focused driving again, but unfortunately not before he catches sight of Sam gently tousling Cas' hair with his free hand. What, are they in some 80s babysitting flick?

A fine, light rain starts up, painting the road ahead of them darker and flickering like Christmas tinsel in the Impala's headlights. They don't meet any other cars on the road, for which Dean is grateful, because he never enjoys being spotted by other people while they're essentially fleeing a crime scene. The fewer eyes, the better, and if it also means he can take the curves a little faster because nobody's vying for space on them, he'll take it. In another ten minutes they crunch over the cracked pavement and deteriorating speed bump that takes them into the motel parking lot, and Dean pulls into the space directly in front of their room. The lot is devoid of human life, and empty save for the Impala and a battered red pickup truck, parked about twenty spots down. For once their luck is holding, and Dean thanks the rain for probably driving a smoker or two indoors. There's no awning to do it under at this place, and the light drizzle is thickening.

"Bleeding's stopped," Sam reports, pulling back into his seat and wrapping his handful of bloody napkins in a couple of leftover clean ones. He starts to shove the mess into the Impala's waste bin, but at a glare from Dean he stops and grudgingly pushes it into the pocket of his jeans. They get out of the car and Dean moves quickly to open the backseat, rain spattering on his head and shoulders. He reaches in and grips Cas' coat by the lapels, pulling him forward until he's sitting mostly upright, slumped against the back of the seat. Sam appears at his side and slips an arm around Cas' back, and together they hoist him up and out into the rain, hauling him toward their room door. The angel mumbles indistinctly under his breath, but his eyes make no attempt to open and he's still limp and heavy.

"Here, I got him if you can get can the door," Sam says, shifting to take Castiel's full weight.

Dean nods and steps ahead, pulling out his key and jamming it in the door. It unlocks and he opens it wide, giving Sam room to bundle Cas through the doorway. He pulls the door shut as soon as they're through and locks it again, reasonably sure that nobody saw them hauling a practically unconscious guy into their room with them. Sam makes it over to the closest bed and lays Castiel down, putting a hand on his forehead.

"Pretty sure he doesn't get sick," Dean points out as he tosses the keys on the table and falls into the room's only semi-comfy chair.

"Pretty sure we don't know what could happen to him," Sam retorts.

He sits on the bed across from Cas and observes the angel with a frown, hugging his arms together at the elbow because they left his bloody jacket on the backseat of the car. Dean frowns himself, watching them, and his stomach turns uneasily as an faint edge of worry gnaws at his insides. Sam's right, he has to admit – they aren't exactly founts of knowledge in the angel medicine department. What Cas is going through has never happened before, not that they know of, and even the angel himself doesn't seem too clear on just how his waning power is going to screw him over next. So far their go-to method of treating Cas has been to lay him out on a bed or a couch and leave him alone, but what if someday he needs more than that and they don't even know what it is? What if that day is today?

Dean shifts uncomfortably in his chair, reminding himself that it hasn't been _that_ long since Cas flipped off his boss and got his ass cut off from Heaven. He's still an angel, dammit, and if things start to get really bad surely they'll get more warning than this. It's not even the first time this has happened, anyway – and that was before he got cut off to boot.

He's jolted out of his thoughts as Cas groans and shudders, turning sideways and curling up into an unhappy ball. Even from across the room Dean can see the hard set to the angel's face – he's clearly in some kind of pain, though just what hurts Dean doesn't know. What does it feel like to use up all of your angel juice? Sam is crouched down by Castiel in an instant, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder.

"Cas?" he says, his tone thick with sympathy. "Are you... I mean, how do you feel? Can we help?"

Cas groans again and slowly forces his eyes open, staring up at Sam blearily through trembling lashes.

"Sam?" he says hoarsely, the word low and faint.

"Yeah," Sam answers softly. "Are you in pain? Can we do anything to help?"

Castiel shakes his head minutely, then grimaces at the movement.

"No. No, I..." Cas's eyes fall shut and he brings his arm up, burrowing his face into the sleeve of his coat. "Just rest," he croaks, his voice muffled by the tan cloth. He shudders again, and once again Sam's fingers move gently through Castiel's hair, like a mother comforting a child. It's girly as all hell, but Cas seems to relax, the sharp lines of tension in his body easing as Sam's fingers card back and forth through the dark fringe. After a moment, his head turns slowly, moving up on top of his arm to give Sam better access.

What a difference a year makes, Dean thinks as he watches, one side of his lips twitching up slowly as he remembers.

 _"The boy with the demon blood. I'm not even human to him."_

 _"Can my little brother kill angels?"_

 _"I don't know. I don't want... to find out."_

A little over a year ago, Cas cringed at Sam's touch and his brother stormed out into the night to spend his hours with a demon bitch. Now Cas breathes a quiet sigh of what sounds like relief and Sam's worried frown melts into concerned hope as he crouches over the angel, fingers still working. There is no resentment in Sam, and no fear in Cas, just his little brother in all his empathic glory, tending gently to the pained man on the bed, and Cas calming beneath his ministrations, trusting in the hands that soothe him without a thought. It's a far cry from the suspicion and enmity of the past, and it comforts Dean more powerfully than if he were suddenly handed the Colt. His brother is back, and Cas is with them. Not just there in the room with them, but _with them_ , on their side, unshakably and irrevocably.

 _"If Uriel tried to kill Sam, what would you do?"_

 _"I don't know."_

Dean remembers his own anger that day all those months ago, his insistence that the angel choose a side.

Well Cas made his choice, and it cost him, but it was the right one in Dean's eyes, and the angel isn't backing down from it. Cas has gone through torture and death trying to help them and if everything else he's done tonight and in the last couple of months is any indication, he's willing to do the same again. He's no longer merely the alien presence that used to crop up every now and then just to hand out orders and stare. Well, the staring still happens, not to mention the constant invasion of personal space, but now... Now Cas is... a friend. And Sam is his brother again.

Dean levers himself out of the chair and approaches the bedside warily, like a wild animal circling another, trying to decide if it's safe to approach. He feels awkward around Cas when the angel is this messed up, and even more so with Sam still leaning over him, kneading his hair and auditioning for America's Sappiest Home Videos. And short of joining that initiative, there's nothing Dean can really do. If it were Sammy stretched out on that mattress, Dean would give him a handful of Ibuprofen and a mug of cocoa and let him sleep with cartoons on while Dean made him soup. But Cas isn't Sam, and he isn't human, so there's not a lot to be done for him. Most of what someone does for a sick person makes the caregiver feel better too, but in Cas' case that's taken from them. Maybe that's why Sam is willing to pull girly crap like petting the poor guy's hair – at least it's something.

And despite the rising estrogen levels in the room, it seems to have worked.

Cas has sunken into a deep unconsciousness, his eyelids shut and still and the lines of pain etched along his face smoothing out. His breathing is slow and even, and as Sam finally pulls his fingers away, Cas' head slips back down the side his arm, his face ending up shoved halfway into it. Now his nose is smashed against his sleeve, and the way his elbow is twisted up under him looks really uncomfortable, but before Dean can voice his thoughts Sam has followed them, pushing Cas' head gently back onto the pillow and straightening his arm for him. The angel looks practically peaceful, the only indication that he's not just enjoying a nap the faint shadow of dried blood beneath his nose that Sam couldn't wipe away completely in the car.

Sam puts his hand on Cas' forehead again, then pulls it back and looks at him thoughtfully.

"You think he gets cold?"

"I dunno, Sammy," Dean says wearily. "Maybe."

Especially what with his powers on the fritz and the cold rain pouring down outside. Yeah, Cas is dressed pretty warmly, but it's barely gotten above 40 degrees lately, and this place doesn't exactly lavish on the heat. They end up tearing the other side of the blanket Cas is lying on up from beneath the mattress and folding it over him like he's the filling in a sandwich. Sam tucks it under him on his other side, drawing the top edge up to his chin. Cas stays completely still, dead to the world beneath the cheap knit covering him.

Sam steps back and shrugs.

"I guess that's the best we can do."

"Yeah, if you're done playing Florence Nightingale with his hair," Dean can't help but heckle him.

Sam rolls his eyes.

"It's called a head massage, Dean. They're really good for headaches or just stress and stuff."

Oh. Dean hadn't thought Sam was doing anything he actually deemed useful. Whatever – it was still girly.

"And where'd you learn that?" Dean teases. "Nannies Anonymous?"

Sam gives him a glare.

"College, okay? Jess used to..." Sam trails off, and Dean's heart clenches uncomfortably. It might be years now since Sam's girlfriend went up in flames, but any mention of her hardly ever fails to sober him. Like Mom... Dean's stomach rumbles softly, and he quickly changes the subject.

"Let's get something to eat. That diner up the road looked pretty good."

Sam glances at Cas and gives a small shake of the head.

"You go. One of us should stay with him."

Dean frowns.

"What, you think demons are gonna bust the place while we're gone?"

"No, I just..." Sam shrugs again, looking uncertain. "What if he needs something?"

"Like what?"

He doesn't eat, he doesn't drink, he doesn't need to use the bathroom... Of course, he doesn't normally sleep, either, so maybe Sam has a point.

"I don't know, Dean," Sam says, sounding slightly irritated. "I just don't feel right leaving him by himself. What if he... does something weird or, or he starts bleeding again? And somebody should be here if he wakes up."

Again, Dean can't help but smile at Sam's 180 since last year – the empathy and protectiveness that had defined him for so long before the demon blood and the lies and the machinations of Heaven and Hell interrupted it.

Sam gives him a funny look.

"What are you smiling about?"

Dean shakes his head.

"Nothing, Sammy. It's fine, you stay if you want. I'll bring you something back, okay?"

Sam nods.

"Yeah, thanks."

Dean turns the collar of his jacket up and heads back out into the rain.

ooo00ooo

The diner has thick burgers and crisp fries and slices of pie the size of Dean's hand. Dean decides to get both of their dinners carry out so they can eat in the room together. He stands leaning against the counter while their order goes through, drumming his fingers and humming Metallica while studiously ignoring the television in the corner when it pops up with breaking news about four bodies being discovered in a back alley, three stabbed to death and one with its eyes somehow burnt out of its head.

"Creepy stuff," the cashier comments as the reporter mentions a fire and evidence suggesting cult activity. Dean nods noncommittally.

"Yeah."

"Will that be all for you?" she asks as the dinner arrives in paper bags. Dean looks over at the pie, and at the last second says,

"Actually, could I get another slice of apple?"

He tells himself he wants it for breakfast tomorrow, but underneath that lie he knows he bought it for Cas, even if the angel probably won't want it and Dean will end up eating it anyway. He smiles and thanks the cashier as she runs his card through the reader, then crumples the tops of the paper bags into his palms and steps out to the Impala. The rain is still going strong, but he's got somewhere safe to wait it out.

ooo00ooo

The room is quiet when he shoves his way back in, bags balanced in one hand and the key in the other. Sam is sitting on the other bed with his laptop, the blue glow from his screen playing faintly across his face. He's wearing a jacket again, the clean one he had in his duffel, and he looks up as Dean closes the door behind him and dumps their dinner on the end of the bed.

"That place is awesome," Dean says cheerfully. "You should see the pie."

Sam smiles in amusement at Dean's constant enthusiasm for the treat, and closes the lid of his laptop, looking at the bags.

"You brought both of ours back here?" he asks, sounding pleased. Dean nods.

"Hell, I figure we deserve a night in. And I'm not gonna eat without my little brother."

Sam laughs as he snags the bag Dean pushes toward him.

"You'll eat without me any day of the week," he points out teasingly.

"Well not today, bitch," Dean says, settling down against the headboard beside him. Sam gives him a mock glare and bumps Dean's shoulder with his own.

"Jerk."

Together they dig into the bags, spreading out the burgers and fries Dean bought across their laps.

"What's that one?" Sam asks, gesturing to the third bag that gets left at the foot of the bed.

"Extra pie," Dean says casually, but Sam's eyes narrow and his lips turn up into a knowing smirk. Dean ignores him and takes a bite out of his burger.

"How's Cas?" he asks around the mouthful of bread and meat. He looks over at the angel, who appears to be the same, lying there right where he was when Dean left, still silent and motionless save for his breathing. "He do anything weird while I was gone?"

Sam snorts slightly at the small jibe and crunches down on a fry.

"His nose started bleeding again," he says evenly. "But I took care of it."

Dean frowns.

"He wake up?"

"No."

"Well then, the television probably won't bother him. Hand me the remote."

Dean flicks on the TV and flips through the channels, keeping the volume down just in case. After a few jumps he hits upon an episode of _Bonanza_ , and they sit there, munching down dinner together and cracking up when Hoss and Little Joe have a little too much and fall off their horses. They watch two episodes back to back, and when the food is long gone and their eyes are drooping, Dean goes down to the front desk to get a cot for the night.

Cas can have his bed.

ooo00ooo

Dean wakes up to sunlight streaming in through the blinds in thin slivers, painting his face with warmth and stabbing directly into his eyes. He sits up, giving himself a shake and looking around as he realizes it wasn't the sunlight that woke him. It was the sound of wood creaking and the slightly confused noises someone might make when he wakes up in a place he's unfamiliar with. Dean glances over to see Cas pushing himself into a sitting position against the headboard, looking around the room carefully. His expression seems to ease as he catches sight of Dean in the corner. Dean tosses his legs over the side of the cot and gets up, heading over to him.

"Hey, Sleeping Beauty's finally awake," he teases gently, and then watches as the reference flies over Castiel's head. He settles onto the edge of Sam's bed and looks at Cas more seriously.

"How you feeling?" he asks.

"Well," Castiel says hesitantly, his voice rougher than usual. Behind him, Dean feels Sam shift and roll over, and a moment later his brother is sitting up too, blinking groggily and looking between the two of them.

"Cas!" he says brightly as his eyes clear and he brushes his hair out of his face. "You're awake! How do you feel? Are you all right?"

Concerned lines appear on Sam's forehead, and Cas nods, smiling faintly at Sam's solicitude.

"Yes, I feel much better," he replies, his fingers worrying at the edges of his coat restlessly. "Thank you for... watching over me."

Cas is awkward too, Dean realizes, unused to this amount of weakness and having to turn himself entirely over to his human companions' care. But he's clearly grateful to them for it, and Dean wonders if Cas ever got care and head massages from his family, or if all they ever gave him was torture and pain. Even if the angels do normally look out for each other, Cas doesn't have them now – his human friends are all he has left.

Sam's face breaks into a smile at Cas' words, although the lines don't leave his forehead entirely.

"You're not in any pain, are you?" he presses.

Castiel shakes his head.

"No," he assures them. "That's gone now."

Sam nods.

"Good."

"Are you two all right?" Cas asks, concern appearing on his own face as he glances back and forth between them.

"Ah, a few bruises is all," Dean says airily. "You took out the Big Kahuna, so we mopped up what was left without a problem."

Cas' forehead crinkles at the unfamiliar expressions, but he nods anyway.

"Good," he says, echoing Sam.

They sit in silence for a few moments, no one certain what to say.

"All right, well... what do you think? Breakfast?" Dean suggests, slapping his knee for emphasis, and Sam nods and rolls out of bed, heading for the bathroom. Cas stays where he is, watching after him. Dean studies him carefully, noting the slump of his shoulders against the wood and the faint bruising that lurks beneath his eyes. Finally Cas glances back at him and shifts uncertainly where he sits.

"If you're going to breakfast, I can leave now," he says quietly, pushing back the blanket.

"You get your zap back yet?"

Cas figures out what Dean means by that much more quickly these days. He shakes his head.

"No, not yet," he answers. "But I'll be completely recovered soon."

Dean nods, then reaches out and gives Cas a friendly pat on the shoulder. The angel looks surprised, but not displeased by the contact. Cas says he's okay now, and while he's not lying, he still looks tired and his mojo isn't bouncing back nearly as fast as it used to. No harm in him sticking around until he's strong enough to fly again.

"Then stick around," Dean tells him, voicing his thoughts aloud. "You can experience the satisfaction of a full ride in the Impala for once."

He's teasing ever so slightly, because Cas never has sat in that car while Dean's driving and been there all the way from start to finish. Well, except last night, but it hardly counts when the guy was so out of it. Cas smiles slightly as Dean pulls his hand back, and says,

"All right."

"Oh hey," Dean says, remembering. "And I got you some pie."

Cas declines the pie, as Dean knew he would, but after Sam gets out of the shower and Dean takes his turn, he agrees to try the coffee at the diner as they head out the door. It seems easier to get him to try liquids than actual food. The day is chilly and frost coats the Impala, but the air is crisp and the sun is bright on the road as they drive. Cas sits serenely in the backseat, upright this time and gazing out the window with a relaxed look on his face. Next to Dean, Sam wraps his jacket more tightly around his body and gives a groan of satisfaction as he stretches his shoulders, the joints popping noisily. Dean fingers the steering wheel lightly and smiles as he drives, eyes on the road except for when he glances back or over to check on one of his brothers.

 **The End**

* * *

That's all. Please review if you have a moment. I'd like to know what people thought. I was particularly pleased with how the fight scene turned out - I think I need more action in my H/C fics. Until next time.


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